911 today... so far

With four ambulance companies in this city, we take turns rotating the 911 calls, this is our week. The first call we got was right as we were eating lunch (as usual) a nail in the eye. a 22 year old guy was using a nail gun, not wearing safety glasses when the nail ricocheted off of the trim and buried itself in his left eye. He pulled it out before we got there which isn't good but understandable. This will allow the fluid inside of the eyeball, the vitreous fluid to drip out, deflating the eye and causing the loss of it.

He may have been lucky as the eye didn't appear to be deflated. The local hospital is not equipped to deal with eye injuries so we called in a helicopter. They advised that Houston was out of the question due to high wind gusts. But Beaumont was a better care facility that we have so we called in the cavalry..



While we were waiting (about 12 minutes, it would take us an hour) we started an IV, dressed the wound and applied O2. the aircraft landed, we got a little morphine in him and he smiled and gave me a thumbs up from inside of the aircraft. He was an illegal and didn't speak English, but I know enough to get by. The aircraft is incredibly loud as it picks up rotor speed to lift off. The video can't capture the actual speed of the rotors but you can sure hear the engine building up...

https://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n58/Ditchdoctor/?action=view&current=91122411010.mp4

Actually it was a pretty busy day yesterday. After the nail in the eye we got a call for a possible stroke. It was a 79 year old black man, he was sitting on the floor and said that he had fallen down. He had a balloon angioplasty just two days ago, so a stroke (a blood clot) was a good possibility. But he was verbalizing complete sentences, had good neural responses of the movement of his feet and hands. His pupils were equal and reactive to light and when I got him to stick his tongue out, it came out straight. A stroke will usually make the tongue come out pointing to one side.

I had noticed some plastic fishing lures laying on the ground and we began to talk fishing on the way to the hospital. i had him laughing before he knew it. We then got an old man returning to a nursing home. I asked him how he felt and he said, "As mean as ever" which is good. No IV in so I let my basic, Chloe take it, I drove.

We then got a call for a bilateral pulmonary embolism. I didn't like this at all, a P.E. can be fatal real quick. this is when a blood clot breaks loose and lodges in the lungs, usually after surgery. Hauling him an hour and a half wasn't appealing as CPR on a dead person for a hundred miles is no fun. We arrived and it was my friend, the 79 year old black man. He looked stable and it was obvious that he liked me and felt comfortable with me.

We loaded him up and for the next 1 1/2 hours we talked and laughed about "big, corn fed girls" and his youth. He sang in a quartet when he was a young man, he was the lead singer. He asked me, "What would make your mouth dry?" I answered, "Not drinking enough beer." We actually had a good time on the trip. got back and managed to sleep from midnight till this morning.

My wife met some ladies down the block and is finally happy in her new home. She was somewhat lonely for a while being isolated like this. But right down around the corner live a lot of really good folks. We went down there last night, had a good fire and drank a lot of rum. There are good people living here on the river and we finally met them all. They are cooking Chinese tonight, they do this every weekend.

I do get attached to my patients, some more than others. I do wonder what became of Louis and if they were able to save his eye.